10 Ass-Kicking Warplanes You’ve Never Heard Of

America is an air power. And for every kind of air power, the U.S. has different, iconic warplanes.

When the Pentagon needs to frighten its enemies and rivals, the Air Force deploys fast, radar-evading F-22 stealth fighters or B-52 heavy bombers bristling with weaponry. When threats turn to violence, the Navy and Air Force can call on their huge arsenals of F-15, F-16 and F-18 jet fighters to drop bombs and fire missiles.

For the quieter, more subtle work of spotting, tracking and killing suspected terrorists, the U.S. relies on armed Predator and Reaper drones operated by the Air Force, Army and CIA. And in the difficult, dirty slog of ground warfare, the Army calls on its Apache gunship helicopters and Blackhawk transports and the Marines their controversial V-22 tiltrotors.

But for a wide range of more secretive missions, the Pentagon possesses tiny forces of specialized, and largely unknown, warplanes.

Some are rugged transports meant to blend in with civilian air fleets and deliver commandos or diplomats to remote battlefields -- or provide overhead surveillance during highly classified Special Operations. Others are electronic wizards, performing esoteric but vital communications functions in the high-tech management of the Pentagon's far-flung forces. And then there are the "aggressors" -- foreign-made or modified domestic models prized for their ability to accurately simulate the capabilities of America's enemies.

Some of these special aircraft are obscure by design. A few are top secret. The rest go unrecognized because, in an American aerial armada populated mostly by fast, loud fighters, lumbering bombers and jet transports and innumerable helicopters, they seem unimpressive. But the vital roles they play in America's domination of the air belie their unassuming exteriors.

What follows are just 10 of the ass-kicking U.S. warplanes you probably didn't know existed.

Above:

Sim Enemy

What better way to train for aerial warfare than to simulate entire air campaigns, right down to using U.S.-made planes as stand-ins for the other side's air force?

That's the thinking behind the Pentagon's Red Flag series of wargames as well as for countless smaller simulated battles. To represent the Russian-made fighters flown by many of America's enemies, the Air Force use its standard F-15 and F-16, flown by highly experienced pilots well versed in adversary tactics.

But the Navy and Marines take a different approach. They fly 31 Northrop F-5s, a type of lightweight dogfighter not used by regular U.S. squadrons -- and which closely duplicates the fast-turning performance of many Russian-made planes.

The F-5 has been out of production for decades, so when the Navy needed to purchase additional copies of the maneuverable jet, it negotiated for some lightly used copies from Switzerland, ensuring the reinforced adversary squadrons will be waging simulated warfare for years to come.

MiGs, Mils and Sukhois

How do the pilots flying the F-5s to simulate Russian jets even know how the Russian models perform? From time to time U.S. forces have the opportunity to conduct training exercises with allies equipped with Soviet-style aircraft. But that experience masks the Pentagon's direct experience operating enemy warplanes.

Since at least 1977 the military has flown roughly a couple dozen Russian-made MiG and Sukhoi fighters from the secretive Tonopah air base in Nevada, under the code name Constant Peg. How the jets were acquired, the Pentagon has never specified, though purchases from non-aligned nations are one possible avenue, as is outright theft. "We didn't know what 90 percent of the switches did," John Manclark, former Constant Peg commander, said of his exotic fighters.

The Army has a parallel program, flying an estimated 13 Russian Mil helicopters, including the Mi-24 gunship pictured above. As recently as the 1990s, the Army openly discussed these "threat simulators," but in recent years has scrubbed the references and even yanked photos off the Internet, for reasons that aren't entirely clear.

The Air Force declassified Constant Peg in 2006, but still keeps most of the details under wraps -- including the current status of America's MiG air force. As recently as 2003, the latest Russian Su-27 fighter was videotaped flying over Tonopah.

Photo: Army

Discreet Spy

The Pentagon values its Russian-made warplanes precisely because they stand out from the legions of F-15s, F-16s and F-18s. But some missions require the opposite approach: total discretion.

Adm. Bill McRaven, commander of all U.S. Special Operations Forces, said in May that his commandos were on the ground in 77 countries. In some of those countries, the commandos must keep a low profile, without sacrificing their ability to gather intelligence. For that, they need a low-profile spy plane.

Fortunately, Swiss firm Pilatus makes just the thing: the single-propeller U-28, which is powerful enough to haul cameras, data-links and imagery analysts, but sufficiently innocuous-looking to avoid serious attention at Third World airports. The Air Force possesses 36 of the sleek planes, which can double as transports.

Flying Truck

The U-28 is hardly delicate, but there are battlefields too remote and too rugged even for the U-28.

So in 2009 the Air Force purchased 10 M28 Skytrucks from a Polish manufacturer. These stubby, twin-engine airlifters are just big enough, and tough enough, to land six fully loaded commandos on some dirt air strip or a length of unimproved road.

Diplomatic Air Force

Special Operations Command isn't the only organization that requires an anonymous, dependable transport for flying in and out of war zones. The U.S. State Department operates 70-year-old Douglas DC-3 cargo planes in support of its far-flung diplomatic outposts in such places as Libya and Iraq.

Upgraded with new engines, the World War II-era DC-3s still aren't very fast -- 150 miles per hour or so -- but they can take off and land pretty much anywhere. A DC-3 was on call to support Christoper Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, in the months before he was killed in a September terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

The ancient but effective transports are part of the little-known Department of State Air Wing, which possesses 230 aircraft and, according to aviation journalist David Cenciotti, performs missions including "reconnaissance and surveillance operations, command and control for counter-narcotics operations, interdiction operations, logistical support, medical evacuation [and] personnel and cargo movement by air."

Photo courtesy of David Cenciotti

Shadowy Errands

Nominally, the Air Force's 36 HC-130s are tankers -- flying gas cans with hoses for pumping fuel into helicopters.

But the HC-130s -- enhanced versions of the venerable C-130 transport -- also handle some of the most sensitive, and thankless, missions in the Pentagon's remit, thanks to their extra radios and navigation equipment and highly trained crews.

In 2006, for example, an HC-130 with 17 U.S. personnel on board flew into Sudan to pick up gear belonging to a U.S. military liaison to that country. This was at the height of the bloody Darfur genocide. And although the flight was legal, Sudanese officials on the ground accused the crew of spying -- and deployed troops to block the plane's departure. An all-day stand-off nearly escalated into a firefight before the HC-130 made its escape. The public learned about the near-disaster only when the Air Force tapped some crew members for commendation.

Photo: Air Force

Drug-Sniffing Sniper-Stalker

The RC-7B is a modified, Canadian-made transport plane fitted with cameras, radars and electronic receivers for listening in on enemy communications. Originally developed for counter-drug ops in Latin America, the Army's seven RC-7s now deploy all over the world on classified missions. Their generic appearance helps them blend in.

With the addition of acoustic gunfire-detectors, in 2002 RC-7s aided in the hunt for the snipers then stalking the Washington, D.C. area, ultimately killing 10 people.

Nine years later, an RC-7 was itself the target of attack, as North Korea apparently used a GPS jammer to interfere with the plane's navigation south of the Demilitarized Zone, forcing the RC-7 to make an emergency landing.

Doomsday Communicator

In the event of a major terror attack or nuclear war, the plan is for the president to hop aboard an E-4 "doomsday" plane, a modified 747 from which he can safely command America's forces.

The Navy's 16 E-6Bs are doomsday back-ups, equipped with nearly every communications device imaginable, with the additional ability to transmit radio messages to submerged submarines via a trailing, five-mile-long antenna.

But it's the E-6's other duties that make it so interesting day to day. With so many different radios, the E-6 is one of the few U.S. warplanes -- the secretive "Bacon" is the other -- that's able to function as a "universal translator," helping U.S. and allied forces talk to each other across great distance. Reporter David Cenciotti even tracked an E-6 apparently playing relay during the May 2011 raid to kill Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. "

Photo: Air Force

Bug-Catcher

Nuclear explosions send radioactive debris swirling high into the atmosphere, where the Air Force's so-called "bug catchers" are there to snatch them up.

At the height of the Cold War more than five decades ago, the U.S. and the Soviet Union each tested hundreds of nukes. To glean what it could from the Soviet tests, the Air Force sent old, propeller-driven B-29 bombers equipped with scoops for sucking up radioactive particles for analysis. The jet-powered WC-135 entered service in 1965, replacing the World War II-vintage planes.

Today the Air Force's two WC-135 spend most of their time in the Pacific, sniffing the air for evidence of North Korean nuclear tests. The planes can also "detect seismic events" associated with nuke blasts, according to Air Force spokesman Maj. Chad Steffey.

Their unique sensors make the bug-catcher planes uniquely suited to another alarming task: monitoring the effects of an accidental nuclear meltdown. When Japan's Fukushima reactor was damaged in last year's tsunami, the Air Force sent a WC-135 to map the fallout.

Photo: Air Force

Stealth Surprise

Officially, the Air Force retired its force of approximately 40 F-117 stealth fighters in March 2008, citing the high cost of maintenance, the jet's waning ability to evade the latest radars and the introduction of the newer and more capable F-22.

But two years later, plane-spotters in Nevada encountered the F-117's familiar diamond shape zooming overhead, as seen the video above. It appears the Pentagon's first stealth warplane has not been grounded, but has only returned to the shadows from where it came.

We can only speculate as to why. Aviationintel's Ty Rogoway believes the radar-evading jets were preserved for testing. "The F-117 could theoretically be used as something of a 'flying measuring stick' for evaluating a radar system’s ability to detect and track low-observable flying objects," Rogoway wrote.

By the same token, it's possible the F-117s are being used to simulate enemy stealth fighters in Pentagon war games, giving U.S. forces realistic targets to defend against. After all, America is not the only country with specialized, and secretive, warplanes.